Making peace with her past. Bachelor alum Cassie Randolph revealed that she wishes ex Colton Underwood nothing but the best — even if their split led to dark times.
“I feel like this is a very loaded question,” Randolph, 27, said during the Monday, October 17, episode of the “Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast,” after being asked how she felt about Underwood, 30, coming out as gay through headlines before sharing the news with her.
“I’m very happy that he is you know is at peace with himself and not carrying that burden anymore, of course,” she explained. “It was a very just overall hard time for me, so I feel like there was just one thing after another and I was just extremely overwhelmed with everything going on.”
Randolph and the former NFL player met during season 23 of The Bachelor, which aired in 2019. While the pair had an instant connection, their relationship hit a snag when the speech therapist’s father wouldn’t give Underwood his blessing to propose and Randolph subsequently left the show.
While the twosome decided to give their romance another shot during the season finale — with the Indiana native even moving to California to be closer to Randolph — they ultimately called it quits for good in May 2020.
Two months later, Randolph filed a restraining order against her ex, claiming he had put a tracking device in her car and showed up at her apartment and her parent’s house uninvited. The order was granted, forcing him to stay at least 100 yards away from her and to not contact her until the matter was privately settled in November 2020.
In April 2021, during an emotional interview with Good Morning America, the athlete came out as gay and publicly apologized to Randolph for their messy breakup.
“I’m sorry for any pain and emotional stress I caused,” he said at the time. “I wish that it wouldn’t have happened the way that it did. I wish that I had been courageous enough to fix myself before I broke anybody else.”
In March, Randolph revealed during an episode of the “Off the Vine” podcast with Kaitlyn Bristowe that she found out about Underwood’s sexuality through the headlines with the rest of the world.
“I found out the same way that everyone else did,” she explained, adding that she saw a video about the news on social media. “It was horrible.” (Underwood announced his engagement to Jordan C. Brown in February.)
On Monday’s “Almost Famous” episode, the California native shared that her now-boyfriend, Brighton Reinhardt, helped her through her split as a friend before they even began dating.
“Me and Brighton had been friends for seven years,” she told cohosts Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti. “That last summer, he was very very supportive just through everything. He’s never been weird. If anything he’s just very defensive or protective and makes me talk I tout with him more than I would like to. Not in a bad way, in a good way.”
When asked if she thought that Reinhardt, 25, was “The One,” Randolph replied, “I feel like that’s a big question to ask, but I hope so. I think so.”
